Payment due upon registration, and spot will be surrendered if not paid within 5 business days of reservation. Early bird discount only applicable if payment is received on or before June 15.

The career-long process of becoming a Master Director is the same process by which we move from the blessed ignorance of adolescent certainty to the more tolerant, if no less passionate, wisdom of “old sage” status. If any of us ever gets there, we are smart enough by then to know that we don’t know as much as other people think we know.

Nevertheless, there are many things to learn from experience, and even a few things to learn from teachers, guides, mentors, and folks who have made all the important mistakes and so know what questions to ask.

Over the course of two days, we will discuss and practice methods, approaches, and boundaries of one aspect of Directing for the Theatre. The workshop will be tailored to the interests and needs of the participants. As soon as I have a list of participants, I will survey the group and design the specifics of the workshop. However, possible areas of concentration include:

developing the “concept” or “guiding light” of the production

how to balance control with creativity when working with actors

how to find the essential story that needs telling

what in the world IS a director and what is her or his job?.

We will use a particular script, which I will distribute and ask the participants to read before the workshop. Which script will depend on the survey results.

Shep Sobel Bio:

Until moving to Albuquerque in August 2009, Shepard Sobel was Artistic Director of New York’s Pearl Theatre Company, which he founded in 1982. He now is a freelance director, and a teacher at UNM, CNM, and Santa Fe University of Art and Design. New Mexico directing projects have included Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Rivals, and The Cave Dwellers at SFUAD, 3 new-play development projects with UNM’s Words Afire Festival, The Eccentricities of a Nightingale also at UNM, 1776 with Landmark Musicals, and The Other Place with Fusion Theatre. At The Pearl, Mr. Sobel oversaw 125 productions of classical theatre, and directed 9 Greek tragedies, 12 Shakespeares, and numerous plays by Molière, Racine, Wycherley, Sheridan, Marivaux, Ibsen, Lessing, Ostrovsky, Chekhov, Strindberg, Lorca, and even a few new plays and world premieres.